Spanish copper has its rival, and a Frenchman was once detected trying
to bring in a nominal four hundred dollars' worth of an imitation,
which he promptly threw overboard when the port guards raised
objections to its quality.

The increasing need of silver currency inland, owing to its free use
in the manufacture of trinkets, necessitates a constant importation,
and till recently all sorts of coins, discarded elsewhere, were in
circulation. This was the case especially with French, Swiss, Belgian,
Italian, Greek, Roumanian, and other pieces of the value of twenty
céntimos, known here by the Turkish name "gursh," which were accepted
freely in Central Morocco, but not in the north. Twenty years ago
Spanish Carolus, Isabella and Philippine shillings and kindred coins
were in use all over the country, and when they were withdrawn from
circulation in Spain they were freely shipped here, till the country
was flooded with them. When the merchants and customs at last refused
them, their astute importers took them back at a discount, putting
them into circulation later at what they could, only to repeat the
transaction. In Morocco everything a man can be induced to take is
legal tender, and for bribes and religious offerings all things pass,
this practice being an easier matter than at first sight appears; so
in the course of a few years one saw a whole series of coins in vogue,
one after the other, the main transactions taking place on the coast
with country Moors, than whom, though none more suspicious, none are
more easily gulled.

A much more serious obstacle to inland trade is the periodically
disturbed state of the country, not so much the local struggles and
uprisings which serve to free superfluous energy, as the regular
administrative expeditions of the Moorish Court, or of considerable